I've been giving a lot of thought in the past week or so about how to do a better job balancing my family life with my job, because lately, I haven't felt like I've been getting the balance quite right. In fact, I feel like my family has kind of been getting the short end of the stick, and I haven't had any time to see many of my friends for months, which is no good. So I am actively considering strategies and solutions to help me get this figured out.
With my still relatively new job - where I've been now since April - my time and attention are consumed to a degree I've never before experienced as a working mother. Essentially, I am responsible for growing a rapidly developing area of business for our company, which is both incredibly exhilarating and fun, but also a tremendous amount of work and responsibility. Because I take this responsibility so seriously, and because I am so energized by the challenge, I find that I am always, always thinking about my work, including in the middle of the night, when I have been known to suddenly hop out of bed and go find my laptop to jot down some ideas that inexplicably popped into my head mid-snooze. And much of the networking and relationship-building aspect of business development that I do - both online and off - necessarily takes place outside of "regular" work hours, so there's that.
The fact that I can be connected to my work 24/7 via Blackberry and laptop - no matter where I am or what I am doing - makes my job easier to do in a lot of ways, but it also means that I can never really turn it completely off. I know this is true for most of the working mothers I know, but some of them just seem to do a better job managing that urge to let 24-7 access to work turn into 24-7 work than I seem to be doing. My brother told me recently when we were visiting his family for the weekend that I have become downright rude of late with regard to continually checking the Blackberry when I'm supposed to be relaxing with the family, and I told him that I couldn't really disagree. I know I need to find a way to sometimes step away from my omnipresent handheld gadget, but whenever I try to do it, I feel rather anxious that I am missing some important email or text that requires a speedy response. And actually, a few times, I actually have failed to respond to something that needed my quick attention when I left the Blackberry behind for a few hours. So that reinforces my Crackberry addiction.
This is also the first job I've ever had where I am working entirely within a billable hours framework, which is standard in the world of PR firms. I know that those of you who are lawyers, accountants or consultants know all about this already, but it's new to me. It's important that I never waste even 15 minutes of my clients' time, as they are being billed for it, and it's also important that I take good care of our company's bottom line by meeting my goals for billing. So while I like to think that I have been a productive and hard working employee in my previous positions with other employers, I now feel a specific and rather urgent accountability to be UBERproductive. This, too, drives my inability to turn my work brain off when I need to. It's really too bad I can't bill for the overnight hours that I end up dreaming about working, because if I could, I'd be a billing machine.
I've always done, and continue to do freelance writing (you are reading some right now) in addition to my
"real" work, and some might suggest that I should just cut that "extra" out of my life as unnecessary. However, even though I love my day job, I am, at heart, a writer. Blogging and writing essays and articles not only helps pay for Christmas and orthodontia, it also keeps the creative, writerly part of my psyche happy. I honestly don't think I could quit writing if I tried, and I know many other people who feel that way about the painting or jewelry-making or knitting they do in addition to their jobs. It's just part of how I function. With the freelance writing at home, as well as the job-related work I do outside of my office, my children are very accustomed to seeing Mom pounding away
on the laptop at odd times and in odd places. In fact, E spent a good part of his first year hanging out in a sling on my chest or in a bouncy seat at my feet as a wrote my book. I definitely think it's good for my
kids to see that I am a wage earner, and that I am eager to do a good job at work that I really enjoy. So I don't think my work should ever be
completely segregated from my family life (I know some children who
don't seem to even know what their parents do at their jobs when they
leave for that 8 hours each day). On the other hand, there has to be
some sense that family time is family time, and that my work doesn't end up being an unwelcome guest in our home who interrupts at meals, overstays her visit and won't leave when asked.
My husband is an incredibly patient person, and he's proud of everything I do, but I know I've been leaning on him too heavily lately to pick up the slack at home so I can send "just one more email" on the weekends or after dinner. Because my older children alternate weeks between their father's house and mine, I feel a special need to be even more focused on them on our weeks together. I miss them so much when they are away that I have what I can only describe as a physical longing for them, and I can't get enough of them on our weeks together. I find myself trying to innoculate them with an extra dose of my mothering when I have the chance, to carry them through the next week when they are away from their mama. I know many parents who share custody with an ex-spouse who say they have totally adjusted to this part of their lives, and that it feels completely natural. This isn't the case for me. Even seven or eight years into it now, it continues to feel totally unnatural and bizarre to be separated from my children half the time. This is the case even though I completely accept that it's the best option in order for them to have the most time with both parents, which they need and deserve. But for me, as their mother, it's kind of like going through life with a missing limb. And because I do want to spend as much time as possible with the big kids on their weeks with me, I find myself trying to cram all my extra work into the alternate weeks, when they are at their Dad's. Of course, this isn't really fair to Jon or to C, who live with me all the time. This is the sort of very specific and slightly weird dilemma that I face as a working mother with four children, three of whom have another home in addition to the one they share with me, their stepfather and their toddler sister. Not only is this a challenge to get figured out so that everyone gets their needs met, and I get my work accomplished, I can also tell you it isn't a problem I ever could have imagined dealing with when I held my eldest child in my arms as a baby, and looked ahead into the future, imagining how I would parent him and any siblings he might eventually have. It's a tough one.
So I've decided to make a concerted effort to figure this out in a way that works for everybody. The new strategy I plan to try is one I've had to develop over time when I am actually at work, since my natural tendencies, without consciously applied discipline on my part, can lead to hyperfocus or disorganization, as well as poor time management (I truly am a classic adult ADHD person. I'm textbook.). At work, I set a timer when I start a task so that I do not allow myself to become hyperfocused on one task to the exclusion of other things. If I allot 30 minutes to working on a proposal, I set the timer for 30 minutes, and when it goes off, I force myself to move on to task #2 on my list, even if I am deeply engrossed in the proposal and wish I could keep at it for the next six hours straight until I completely finished every detail. I think I am going to allow myself windows of specifically designated work time while at home, and then force myself to confine ALL work-related activity - including thinking about it or talking about it - to those blocks of time. But when the timer goes off, I will make myself turn the mental channel, as it were, and give my full attention to reading a book or folding laundry with the children. Or even to paying focused attention to my sweet husband, whose very patience with my workaholism too often leads me to assume I can catch up with him later, after kid needs and work needs are met.
So that's my new work-life balance resolution: I will actually schedule some work time at home, knowing that I am going to do it anyway, instead of having it continually intrude into family time in a scattered and unpredictable way. We'll see how it goes. And since I know myself pretty well, I may have to include as part of the plan that I literally turn the Crackberry over to Jon during the times when I am not supposed to be working. He can then hide it somewhere, locked up, until the timer says I can have it back for an hour or two.
I'd love to hear from those of you who are also working parents with really demanding or all-consuming work lives what strategies you use to make sure your work doesn't intrude to an unhealthy degree into your family life. Share your thoughts in the comments below.
